Public Spending On Health Care and Health Outcomes: Cross-Country Comparison

Year 2013, Volume: 2 Issue: 4, 82 - 100, 01.12.2013

Savaş Çevik M. Okan Taşar

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the effect of government spending on healthcare on health outcomes with cross-national comparison. We run crosssectional regressions to estimate the strength of association between child and infant mortality rate and public health expenditures in worldwide sample. We find statistically significant and robust results by various specifications. We found government health spending as a share of GDP is negatively associated with lower level of under-5 mortality by elasticities of from -0.17 to -0.22. The elasticity is -0.20 for infant mortality. When government spending as a share total health expenditures is used as estimator, elasticities are -0.33 for under-5 mortality and -0.23 and -.0.32 for infant mortality. We also found significant and negative coefficient a number of socio-political determinants such as the law and order, education level, population as well as income level as a main determinant. Compared to previous studies, we found the income level to be slightly less significant and the public health spending to be slightly more significant empirically.

Keywords

Public expenditure on health, child mortality, infant mortality, health economics.

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